Family Dinner in Boston

Last week, my sister had an art opening at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, and my mom and dad used that as an excuse to finally get out to the east coast after all of these years. With Laura, Mitch, Midori, Ariel, and my mom and dad in town along with Melissa, Dino and Aiden, it was, at times, a full house. We went out to restaurants a couple of times, but the last two nights that the Chicago branch of the family was in town, Dino and I split up cooking duties.

I decided to finally make something out of the Oleana cookbook that I have purchased several months ago. I went with the "Spoon Lamb," a braised lamb shoulder chop with a sauce of reduced braising liquid and pomegranate molasses, and smokey eggplant, a puree of eggplant seasoned with urfa chiles, smoked salt, and lemon, combined with greek yogurt and toasted pine nuts.
We had a shredded carrot salad with apricots and another salad with arugula, shaved fennel, blood oranges, and olives as side dishes.